Shadows Out of Time

Crowley glanced at the man beside him. “Professor Bauer, these inscriptions on the side have significance, do they not?”

“Of course,” Bauer replied quizzically.

“Please excuse me if my pronunciation is off. ‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh…’”

“No!” shouted Suydam. “Crowley, you idiot!”

“‘…wgah’nagl fhtagn!’”

From the solid wall at the end of the tunnel, a greenish-grey tentacle, as thick as a man’s torso, began to materialize. It was quickly followed by a second. Then a third.

“Give me the box!” Suydam ordered. “Before it’s too late!”

“Run!” Crowley yelled at Bauer and Capone, pointing past Suydam down the tunnel with his revolver. Then: “Catch!”

Suydam leaned forward, knees bent, prepared to catch the stone box despite his apparent age. Rather than toss the box in his direction, however, Crowley swung around to hurl it at the grasping tentacles. They wrapped around it easily.

“Nein!” cried Bauer. The professor leapt after the artifact, intending to wrestle it free.

“Wolfgang!” Crowley had no time to say more. Another tentacle lashed out, and the traveler from the past became a smear on the floor.

Crowley raced after the teenager. He shot past a bemused Fiske, who was coming to investigate the screams, and gestured the policeman to follow. They reached the ladder a moment before Blake, just in time to see the youth scramble up and disappear. At least, Crowley saw him. Neither of the men showed any awareness of the intruder. Robert Suydam’s distraction spell still functioned.

Possibly Suydam did, as well.

“What was all that noise about?” Blake demanded. The same question was written on Fiske’s face.

Crowley glanced back over his shoulder. The tunnel was eerily quiet now. His expression turned stoic.

“I fear I loosed, er, loosened something, stumbling in the dark. I thought the roof about to collapse. Silly me. I can confirm that I found no evidence of sinister foreign spies. Or non-sinister ones. Did either of you discover anything?”

Blake shook his head. “If we had more than a few hundred agents scattered over the entire country, we could do a more thorough search…”

“Not every tip pans out,” Fiske consoled Blake. “Your man is right. We’ll wind up just sealing the tunnel shut again.”

“Yeah.” Blake nodded. “First, though, I’m getting electric lights installed and giving the place one last going over. We may have to come back someday. Unlikely as that is.”

“I suppose you can waste your time on that,” Crowley said, resigned. “I remind you, however, though your country is not yet directly involved in our Great War, you are providing aid. There are German saboteurs in this city, planning something destructive before the year is out. You should concentrate your efforts on finding them.”

“Oh, we will, Aleister, we will,” Blake assured him. “The Bureau is all about stopping the bad guys.”

Crowley considered this might be a good time to arrange another mystical retreat. The astrologer Evangeline Adams, for whom he’d done freelance work, owned a cabin upstate. If he ran into that teenager, he’d advise him to leave town, as well.

In case Suydam held a grudge.

In his mansion overlooking New York Bay, Robert Suydam waited, sprained ankle throbbing under its bandages, hands gripping the armrests of his cushioned chair, sharing Clarence’s thoughtful silence. Actively seeking revenge for today’s interference would be a waste of time, time he was running out of. Still, should he ever again cross paths with Crowley, or that arrogant youngster Al…

Presently, Suydam had larger concerns. A ship was due from Sudan next week, carrying yet another package for his unholy collection. The loss of the Lustrous Triacontahedron was a setback, but there are many routes to immortality.

Provided one is willing to pay the price.

Or make others pay it.

Just the Weight of God BRYAN D. DIETRICH

I have examined Google Maps and Google Earth with greatest care, yet have never again found Angell Street. Even without GPS, it should be easy. Oklahoma City is laid out like a grid, like the tesserae mosaics my father used to design for those tight-asses out in Nichols Hills or the comic book panels he loved so much. Unlike Memphis or Seattle, Oke City isn’t some strange concatenation of tentacled roads flailing madly around rivers, changing names, leading nowhere. I’ve wandered one end of the city to the other, searched every impossible place from brick town to the Paseo, from the Fire Fighters’ Hall of Fame to the edge of Norman where they keep the nuthouse. I’ve looked everywhere but cannot find the neighborhood, the singular street, or that strange little store, where, during my final semester as director of the Rose theater, I read the first pages of the last book my father never wrote.